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‘Book of Mormon’ and ‘War Horse’ Win Top Tonys

Andrew Rannells, as Elder Price, was at the center of a production number from “The Book of Mormon” at the Tony Awards.Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

“The Book of Mormon,” a smash-hit Broadway musical made out of the unlikeliest of elements — unwavering faith, jokes about AIDS and lyrics so profane that many of its songs could not be televised — emerged as the runaway winner at the Tony Awards on Sunday. Created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone of “South Park” fame, along with the composer Robert Lopez, “Mormon” earned nine Tonys, including best musical and three more for Mr. Parker, making this Broadway newcomer as honored in one evening as Joshua Logan, the director and a writer and producer of the classic musical “South Pacific.”

A fish-out-of-water tale of missionaries in war-torn Africa, “Mormon” brought an exuberant irreverence to Broadway that seemed to rub off on the Tonys as a whole. Sunday’s broadcast, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, featured a “did they really say that?” comic opener that was edgier than usually seen at the staid ceremony — a song-and-dance number arguing that Broadway, with its con artists, Mormons and nuns this season, is “not just for gays anymore.” And it ended with Chris Rock, a star of the nominated play “The ____________ With a Hat,” suggesting before presenting the best musical prize that a “Mormon” victory was a foregone conclusion.

“This is such a waste of time,” Mr. Rock said about the buildup. “It’s like taking a hooker to dinner.”

With 14 nominations, the “Mormon” juggernaut was widely expected and, in general, the night went according to plan. The British import “War Horse” won best play and took awards for set, sound design, lighting design and for the two directors who helped bring uncanny life to the hand-made puppets that give the show such visual panache. And instead of Hollywood celebrities, who were largely snubbed among the nominees this year, the theater mainstays Norbert Leo Butz (“Catch Me if You Can”), Sutton Foster (“Anything Goes”) and Mark Rylance (“Jerusalem”) each won second Tonys as lead performers.

But it was “The Normal Heart,” an Off Broadway hit in 1985 about the early years of AIDS in New York, that generated the evening’s most emotional heat, winning for best play revival and for supporting performances by Ellen Barkin, who plays a frustrated doctor, and John Benjamin Hickey, who plays a gay man with AIDS. The play was written by the activist Larry Kramer, who fell out of favor with many gays and politicians for his strident warnings in the early ’80s about unsafe sex and government inaction against AIDS.

“I could not have written it had not so many of us so needlessly died,” Mr. Kramer said in accepting the Tony. “Learn from it, and carry on the fight. Let them know that we are a very special people, an exceptional people. And that our day will come.”

Photo

Neil Patrick Harris, in the opening number, was the host of the Tony Awards show on Sunday.Credit
Sara Krulwich/ The New York Times

Only Broadway shows are eligible for Tonys (39 this year), with nominations and awards driven largely by the votes of theater insiders, many of whom have commercial interests in certain shows. Still, the pool of Broadway competitors was considered exceptionally strong with new plays and musicals outnumbering the revivals that sometimes dominate the stage season.

One of the rare shows not based on a movie or an existing songbook, “Mormon” was the clear favorite for best musical, but whether it would sweep all of its categories was the talk of Broadway in recent weeks, given its critical acclaim and audience enthusiasm. Mr. Parker’s prizes were all collaborative; the score and book awards were shared with both Mr. Lopez and Mr. Stone and the director award shared with Casey Nicholaw. (The fourth was as a producer.) “I want to thank my dad for his edge, my mom for her sweetness,” Mr. Parker said in one of his speeches. “And I really want to thank ‘South Park’ fans. If it weren’t for you guys, we wouldn’t be here.”

Accepting the award for best musical, Mr. Parker also gave a shoutout to another, unseen collaborator — Joseph Smith, the 19th-century American religious leader who founded the Mormon religion: “You did it, Joseph, you got the Tony!”

But when Mr. Nicholaw lost the best-choreography prize to Kathleen Marshall for “Anything Goes,” and “Mormon” lost costume design to the musical “Priscilla Queen of the Desert,” it ended any real chance “Mormon” had of besting the record of 12 Tony wins set by “The Producers.”

In the acting categories, the Academy Award winner Frances McDormand (“Fargo”) won for best actress in a play for “Good People,” appearing in a denim jean jacket and glasses and hailing her character Margie — a working-class, financially desperate mother from South Boston, as “a classic American hero” that young actresses will play for years to come.

Her best-actor counterpart, Mr. Rylance for “Jerusalem,” won over Joe Mantello (“The Normal Heart”), Al Pacino (“The Merchant of Venice”) and others in one of several highly competitive categories. In accepting his second Tony, Mr. Rylance once again turned to the inscrutable and intriguing words of the Minnesota poet Louis Jenkins. Asked after his victory why he chose to share Mr. Jenkins’s thoughts about the art of “walking through walls,” Mr. Rylance said, “I just think it’s good advice.”

The Tonys ceremony was held at the 3,000-seat Beacon Theater after its usual home, the 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall, booked a new Cirque du Soleil show. The smaller space made for a tight squeeze: fewer producers of Tony-nominated shows were given seats, limits were strongly recommended on people taking the stage for winning shows, and some guests were crammed into C-list seating.

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The cast of “Catch Me if You Can” performed the song “Don't Break the Rules,” led by Norbert Leo Butz, center, at the 2011 Tony Awards ceremony, held at the Beacon Theater.Credit
Sara Krulwich/ The New York Times

Mr. Harris, the openly gay sitcom star, who won an Emmy hosting the Tonys in 2009, was in charge again, sweeping into the audience during the opening number to comment on the sexiness of various straight actors.

“Angela Lansbury, you’re super hot — are those things real?” he said, hovering over the 85-year-old multiple Tony-winner. Mr. Harris soon moved on to Brooke Shields, who struggled with some of her lines — including a joke about one of Representative Anthony D. Weiner’s tweets of indiscreet photos. (Apologizing for the flub later, she ended up swearing and had to be bleeped out.)

The new musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” also came in for ribbing from Mr. Harris, who restricted himself to 30 seconds of jokes about the show after a long winter of mockery over its record-setting $70 million budget, technical problems, actor injuries and opening-night delays. “No audience members were harmed in the making of this musical — yet,” he said.

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The last word on “Spider-Man” came from Bono and the Edge of U2, its composers, who were humble and self-deprecating. “We used to be famous for being in U2,” Bono said, only half-jokingly, before sounding a note of awe about the “great education” of making a Broadway musical. “Spider-Man” opens on Tuesday night and will be eligible for Tonys next year.

Among the noncompetitive awards given before the broadcast was a lifetime achievement honor for the South African playwright Athol Fugard, who has written for decades about apartheid, including in his best-known work “ ‘Master Harold’ and the Boys.”

Another lifetime award went to Philip J. Smith, chairman of the Shubert Organization, Broadway’s biggest landlord. The Lookingglass Theater Company in Chicago received the regional theater Tony Award, and the playwright and actress Eve Ensler (“The Vagina Monologues”) received the Isabelle Stevenson Award for humanitarian contributions.

A special Tony Award was given to the Handspring Puppet Company, based in Cape Town, South Africa, for its creation of the life-size puppets in “War Horse.” Tony honors for excellence went to William Berloni, who has trained animals for the stage for more than three decades; the Drama Book Shop, on the edge of the Broadway theater district; and Sharon Jensen and Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, an advocacy group for minority and disabled actors.

A version of this article appears in print on June 13, 2011, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Book of Mormon’ and ‘War Horse’ Win Top Tonys. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe